Gorham to honor WWII plane spotters

A little shed in Gorham that once housed plane spotters later became a chicken coop. This spring, it will take its place of honor once more.

Michele E. Cutri-Bynoe

They would listen by night and watch by day, and if they saw or heard the sound of an airplane overhead, they immediately dialed a phone number in Buffalo.

Planes cause no alarm today, but during World War II, only military aircraft crossed the skies. But was it an American or enemy plane?

That’s where the spotters came in. Ordinary citizens across the Finger Lakes area volunteered to man houses equipped with phones so they could report any air travel they saw to military authorities.

Gorham will pay homage to its war effort by restoring its weathered and well-traveled spotter house. In the spring of 1942, a shed Gilbert Wood had built 18 years earlier as part of a gas station on the southwest corner of Route 247 and County Road 18 was recruited and moved farther down County Road 18 to Vernon and Grace Bigham’s farm half a mile east of Reed Corners, according to Steve Mumby, president of the Gorham Historical Society.

The little 8-by-12-foot building, 11 feet from ground to roof peak, began duty on Brigham’s farm as an “aerial observation” post. After a telephone was installed, local citizens took turns manning the post in three-hour shifts on nights and weekends and whenever Grace Bigham was unable to look for planes from the windows of her home, explained Mumby.

With a woodstove to keep him warm, Steve’s father, Bob Mumby, would settle into a comfortable chair tuning in the AM radio to keep him company. He kept the volume low so he could listen for planes while on his 9 p.m.-to-midnight watch. He was only 15 back then, but he remembers having the reading light on and flipping through magazines to stay awake as he waited for planes. He volunteered every Saturday night for two or three years. At the end of his shift, he would ride his bike home through the darkness.

Bob remembers the chart on the wall with diagrams of what all the aircraft looked like. The plane silhouettes were for the daytime spotters, used to identify plane types.
“These were all propeller planes, so they flew much lower elevations than they do now,” he said. That made them noisy and easy to spot.

“You could tell by the sound whether or not they were a heavy bomber,” added Bob, who confessed that there weren’t many planes on the night shifts.

“I’m not sure that a plane ever went over when I was on duty,” agreed Vernon’s cousin, Bill Bigham, another night spotter who was in his early 20s at that time. Nonetheless, “I faithfully turned out and waited for an airplane to go over.”

Most of the planes that went over flew in daylight.

“Sometimes there would be whole squadrons flying over,” said Bob. The spotter would then call Air Command in Buffalo.

“They would know if it was something that wasn’t scheduled,” he said. If it wasn’t a scheduled flight, “it would be pretty suspicious that it was the enemy,” Bob said. However, no Axis plane is ever known to have flown over the United States.

When the war ended, so did the spotting house’s heyday. It was moved a quarter of a mile down County Road 18 to store bags of grain.

“I acquired the property in 1966, after my father’s death,” said Bill Bigham. The building sat there until Suzanne VanNorman approached him in the 1970s asking to buy it to use it as a playhouse for her two daughters.

The building was put on skids, so Bigham could move it across his field and down the road.

“I moved it the better part of a mile to Mumby Road,” said Bigham. It took him three hours. He and his wife were supposed to go to a wedding. “I was part way down the road, when I had to leave the task to someone else,” said Bigham, laughing.

The building passed hands again when the VanNormans sold their farm to Leroy Burkholder, who used the building as a chicken coup until the

Gorham Historical Society bought it on March 19 for all of $200.

Soon, the building will take yet another trip, this time to Wayne Finger Lakes BOCES in Flint.

“We’re going to take it back to our pole barn to refurbish it,” said Jim Rysewyk the school’s carpentry instructor for 23 years.

In three weeks, BOCES students will begin to replace both the building’s rotted floor and some of the shake shingles, said Rysewyk. They will also fix windows and irregular sashes, he added. The historical society will pony up another $500 for materials. After set up and landscaping, “we are optimistic that the total cost will come to under $1,000,” said Steve Mumby.

When the work is completed, students will help deliver the building back to a spot east of the old post office, next to the Gorham Library on land donated by the town. The society plans to paint the building white and furnish it as it once was when it did duty as a Plane Spotting Building.

For more information or to make donations, write to the Gorham Historical Society, P.O. Box 176, Gorham, NY 14461.

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